One State for one People. Thou shalt not be a victim, or perpetrator, but above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. Yasher Koach!

February 11, 2014

Double standard Against Israel

by Alan M. Dershowitz

Every time Israel seeks to defend its
civilians against terrorist attacks, it is accused of war crimes by
various United Nations agencies, hard left academics and some in the
media. It is a totally phony charge concocted as part of Hamas' strategy
-- supported by many on the hard left -- to delegitimize and demonize
the Jewish state. Israel is the only democracy in the world ever accused
of war crimes when it fights a defensive war to protect its civilians.

This
is remarkable, especially in light of the fact that Israel has killed
far fewer civilians than any other country in the world that has faced
comparable threats. In the most recent war in Gaza fewer than a thousand
civilians -- even by Hamas' skewed count -- have been killed. This,
despite the fact that no one can now deny that Hamas had employed a
deliberate policy of using children, schools, mosques, apartment
buildings and other civilian areas as shields from behind which to
launch its deadly anti-personnel rockets. The Israeli Air Force has
produced unchallengeable video evidence of this Hamas war crime.

Just
to take one comparison, consider the recent wars waged by Russia
against Chechnya. In these wars Russian troops have killed tens of
thousands of Chechnyan civilians, some of them willfully, at close range
and in cold blood. Yet those radical academics who scream bloody murder
against Israel (particularly in England) have never called for war
crime tribunals to be convened against Russia. Nor have they called for
war crime charges to be filed against any other of the many countries
that routinely kill civilians, not in an effort to stop enemy
terrorists, but just because it is part of their policy.

Nor did
we see the Nuremburg-type rallies that were directed against Israel when
hundreds of thousands of civilians were being murdered in Rwanda, in
Darfur and in other parts of the world. These bigoted hate-fests are
reserved for Israel.

The accusation of war crimes is nothing more
than a tactic selectively invoked by Israel's enemies. Those who cry
"war crime" against Israel don't generally care about war crimes, as
such, indeed they often support them when engaged in by countries they
like. What these people care about, and all they seem to care about, is
Israel. Whatever Israel does is wrong regardless of the fact that so
many other countries do worse.

When I raised this concern in a
recent debate, my opponent accused me of changing the subject. He said
we are talking about Israel now, not Chechnya or Darfur. This reminded
me of a famous exchange between Harvard's racist president, Abbott
Lawrence Lowell, and the great American judge Leonard Hand. Lowell
announced that he wanted to reduce the number of Jews at Harvard,
because, "Jews cheat." Judge Hand replied that "Christians also cheat."
Lowell responded, "You're changing the subject. We are talking about
Jews."

Well, you can't just talk about Jews. Nor can you just
talk about the Jewish state. Any discussion of war crimes must be
comparative and contextual. If Russia did not commit war crimes when its
soldiers massacred tens of thousands of Chechnyans (not even in a
defensive war) then on what basis could Israel be accused of
accidentally killing a far fewer number of human shields in an effort to
protect its civilians? What are the standards? Why are they not being
applied equally or selectively? Can human rights endure in the face of
such unequal and selective application? These are the questions the
international community should be debating, not whether Israel, and
Israel alone, violated the norms of that vaguest of notions called
"international law" or the "law of war."

If Israel, and Israel
alone among democracies fighting defensive wars, were ever to be charged
with "war crimes," that would mark the end of international human
rights law as a neutral arbitrator of conduct. Any international
tribunal that were to charge Israel, having not charged the many nations
that have done far worse, will lose any remaining legitimacy among
fair-minded people of good will,

If the laws of war in
particular, and international human rights in general, are to endure,
they must be applied to nations in order of the seriousness of the
violations, not in order of the political unpopularity of the nations.
If the law of war were applied in this manner, Israel would be among the
last, and certainly not the first, charged.

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About Me

I write this blog to voice an opinion of a : non-PC, non-politically affiliated, pro meritocracy, TNSTAAFL, believer in NO man, that is sick and tired of the Arab / Muslim taqiyya campaign of lies and fabrication, who is striving for observance and Aliyah.